Muslims Writing Britain and Beyond: Faith, Class and Multicultural Politics

The proposed research will explore and interrogate contemporary literary representations of Muslim culture and identities. It will focus in particular on British writers of South Asian Muslim heritage, engaging substantially with debates and controversies concerning the place of Muslims in contemporary multicultural Britain, as well as with the historical presence and practices of Muslims in Britain from the early years of the twentieth century.

Since the controversy sparked by Salman Rushdie's 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, British Muslims have been placed increasingly at the centre of tensions and urgent debate concerning multiculturalism by a series of events. These include the 1991 Gulf war; the July 2001 'race riots' in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham; the 9/11 attacks and 'war on terror' waged by Britain in Afghanistan and Iraq; and the 2005 bombings on London transport by British Muslim men. The research will demonstrate the dominance in political debate and national broadcast and broadsheet media of liberal constructions of this minority which represent 'culture' (encompassing religion) as the main factor in identity formation and the primary source of the perceived ills of the 'community', erasing or at best marginalising the social and cultural exclusion experienced by a significant proportion of British Muslims. In such constructions, Britain's male Muslim youth becomes hyper-masculinized through a discourse that identifies it with disaffection, criminality, violence and terror, and leaves little space for alternative subjectivities. In debate about forced marriage, 'honour killings' and the wearing of the hijab, Muslim women are frequently represented either as submissive to patriarchal religious culture or, conversely, as 'liberated' from it. Islam and Muslims have come to figure increasingly as secular modernity's fundamentalist 'other'.

South Asian Muslim Britons have engaged with these events, controversies and discourses - not just in the media and the political sphere but also in the arts and fiction. The project will offer close readings of a selection of novels, short stories and autobiographical accounts by a number of authors including Tariq Mehmood, Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Monica Ali, Nadeem Aslam, Sarfraz Manzoor, Ed Hussain, Yasmin Hai and Shelina Zahra Janmohamed. It will explore the ways in which the texts reproduce, debate or destabilize normative ideological constructions of British Muslim culture, and how they might inform current debates about contemporary multicultural Britain. These concern, for example, the place of religious faith within a largely secular public sphere; the intersection of class, gender and generation with religion in the formation of identities, affiliations and practices; and protests by Muslims against creative work and the questions they raise about the politics of representation. By focusing on the silences and contradictions of the primary texts, the study will shed light on social contradictions that are normatively obscured by ideology and demonstrate the centrality of the role of class in shaping Muslim minority identities and practices. It will thereby challenge liberal binaries of secularism, modernity and individual freedom versus religiosity, tradition and communal constraint, and advocate an understanding of multiculturalism and anti-racism which valorises subaltern formations and minority rights.

While its primary focus is on the last 25 years, the project will also incorporate an exploration of the South Asian Muslim presence in Britain for the past 100 years in order to historicise their contemporary presence, practices and reception. Further, while its key concern is with Britain, the research will necessarily take in a wider, global context, incorporating discussion of how the writers have responded to events and debates relating to 'terror' and the 'war on terror' which have impacted profoundly on British Muslims.

Beyond academia, my research project will benefit literary festivals (i.e., the Birmingham Book Festival) and the general reading public who attend them; creative arts organisations (i.e., Sampad and the Writers' Centre, Norwich) and the audiences of their events; the broadsheet press (i.e., the Guardian) and its readership; members of British Asian communities; and secondary schools, further education colleges and their pupils. All of these organisations or groups of people will benefit from the opportunity to engage with writing by Muslim authors and/or current debates concerning Muslims in Britain and/or evidence of the historical presence of Muslims in Britain. The introduction of 'British Muslim' writing into a literary event or school will diversify the programme or curriculum, bringing new stories and perspectives into these forums. It will also engage participants with topical debates via the literary voices of Muslims which have the potential to offer new, critical angles for considering current events and controversies. Evidence of the long historical presence of Muslims in Britain, showcased through the 'Making Britain' database (see below), will emphasise to members of British Asian communities as well as to the general British public the depth as well as the breadth of the Muslim contribution to British life, thereby challenging normative discourses that position Muslims on the margins of the nation.

These benefits will be ensured in the following ways:

1. Building on previous collaboration with the Birmingham Book Festival and the South Asian arts organisation Sampad, I will lead a seminar on 'British Muslim' writing as well as a series of readings by 'British Muslim' writers at the 2010 Birmingham Book Festival. Existing connections with a number of authors through my 2004 anthology of British Asian short stories Walking a Tightrope will enable me to secure writers for such an event.

2. I will propose to the Writers' Centre, Norwich, a series of workshops in schools and further education colleges. This organisation has substantial experience of liaising between writers and schools to orchestrate educational events. While pitched at a younger audience, the workshops will similarly comprise readings by writers of Muslim heritage and debate based around the questions and issues raised by the readings. This kind of workshop would fit well into the compulsory curriculum subjects of English or citizenship while introducing new material and providing alternative perspectives.

3. I will propose a series of topical discussion pieces relating to my research project to the Guardian's online 'Comment is Free'. Examples of themes for these pieces include: the tension between artistic freedom and minority religious rights; the place of faith in the public sphere; and how current legislation responds to Islamophobia. This forum gives readers the opportunity to respond to and thus actively engage with the discussion pieces, thereby providing greater benefit to the reader than a conventional newspaper column.

4. As Research Associate on the 3-year AHRC-funded project 'Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, 1870-1950', I have contributed to the production of a fully searchable and interactive online database of several hundred entries on South Asian writers, artists and political activists in Britain between 1870 and 1950. While the database will be launched in September 2010, its authors will continue to create additional entries after this date. I plan to contribute a number of entries relating to South Asian Muslim individuals, organisations and events in Britain during the period in question, thereby drawing on the archival element of my proposed research. With a strong design and interactive features, this database will be fully accessible and attractive to the general public and therefore